Our accommodation in Monreale wasn’t great but it was clean and not too expensive. The most disappointing part was the self-serve pre-packaged breakfast. We chose to skip it and go to a café but the prices were notably higher than other places we’ve been. Two cappucini and two cornetti added up to 12€.
Expensive and not the best we've had (that's reserved for Pasticceria Caprice in Palazzolo Acreide) but better than the prepackaged stuff offered at our Bed and "Breakfast"
We were waiting to enter the Cattedrale di Monreale by 0830 and were first in line. That didn’t stop a French family from pushing past everyone in line to enter first, presumably to visit only the cathedral since they didn’t buy tickets. Despite the signs about proper dress, their two teenage girls were allowed in in their ultra-short cutoffs.
In any case, there weren’t very many people inside when we entered. We spent a little over an hour in the cathedral and ancillaries our full tickets gave us access to and when we left, the place was jammed. It was worth arriving early! I took many many photos and will subject you to only 22. I'll add that I waited until I got home to review and edit them on my laptop with the latest version of Lightroom Classic because there's a new denoise tool to improve photos shot at high ISO (which happens when you shoot handheld in low light) but my poor old laptop isn't really up to it. I did 3 of the 22; can you tell which? Probably not by the time they are exported as relatively small jpg files for this journal!
I can't remember which chapel this was (to the left of the apse as you face it so I'll call it north) but the floor is magnificent! We were astounded that we were allowed to walk on it.
We collected our bikes and bags and changed into shorts for the quick descent into Palermo. We took the main road in, perhaps the same one Team Anderson exited on, but mid-day traffic wasn’t bad and was mostly in the opposite direction. It helped that we were going downhill too.
Massimo at B&B Gallidoro welcomed us back and after lunch we set about packing our bikes. That went smoothly; we hope our flight home tomorrow goes as well.
Lunch: Sicilian street food at a tourist restaurant on the pedestrian strip. The street was much busier than when we were in Palermo in mid-March.
